Tangle - The Big, Beautiful Bill gets through the Senate.

Episode Date: July 2, 2025

On Tuesday, following a marathon all-night voting session, the Republicans’ taxation and spending bill passed the Senate 51–50 on a tie-breaking vote from Vice President JD Vance. Republican Senators Rand Paul (KY), Thom Tillis (NC), and Susan Collins (ME) joined every Democratic senator in voting no; all other Republican senators voted yes. The bill — known as the One Big, Beautiful Bill (or OBBB) — originally passed the House 215–214 on May 22, but due to changes in the Senate, it now requires another majority vote in the lower chamber before it can be sent to President Donald Trump for approval. Ad-free podcasts are here!Many listeners have been asking for an ad-free version of this podcast that they could subscribe to — and we finally launched it. You can go to ReadTangle.com to sign up!You can read today's podcast⁠ ⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠, our “Under the Radar” story ⁠here and today’s “Have a nice day” story ⁠here⁠.Take the survey: Do you think of the Big, Beautiful Bill will pass by July 4? Let us know!Disagree? That's okay. My opinion is just one of many. Write in and let us know why, and we'll consider publishing your feedback.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. Our Executive Editor and Founder is Isaac Saul. Our Executive Producer is Jon Lall.This podcast was written by: Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75.Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Senior Editor Will Kaback, Hunter Casperson, Kendall White, Bailey Saul, and Audrey Moorehead.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From executive producer, Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon and good evening and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. And on today's episode, we're going to be talking about the big, beautiful bill passing the Senate, the signature achievement for the Trump administration. So far, a major, major, major legislative update, I guess we could say, a major piece of legislative news. We're gonna break down some views from left and the right,

and then I've got a lot to say about this bill, what's in it, how it got passed. There's a lot here to cover. Before we do jump in though, I wanna give you one last reminder that tonight, I'm gonna be doing a live stream at 8 p.m. Eastern with editor-at-large Camille Foster. We're going to be answering some reader questions about his piece on the 2020 racial reckoning.

I'm going to kind of interview him, take some questions from the audience. I think it's going to be really cool. We're trying to do some more of this live stream community oriented stuff going forward with our team expanding. We have a bigger capacity to do that. And this is like a little bit of an experiment and also, you know, something we've done before that we're just excited to do more of. So if you have not yet listened to that episode, we put it up on our podcast feed

last night, apologies for the delay there. I know that I said yesterday that the podcast was up. I got a few texts from friends about that. I was wrong. I had a miscommunication with John, our trusty podcast executive producer about that. But it is up now. So if you haven't listened to or read the piece yet, you can do that. Definitely recommend doing it before the night and then come into the live stream and hang it out for a bit. I think it should be pretty fun.

All right, with that, I am going to send it over to the aforementioned John Law to break down today's main story and then I'll be back for my take. ["The Big Bang"] Thanks, Isaac, and welcome, everybody. Here are your quick hits for today. First up, President Donald Trump said that Israel has agreed to a 60-day ceasefire in

Gaza and called on Hamas to accept the proposal. Number two, Elon Musk and President Trump continued their public feud over the big, beautiful bill, with Musk saying he would support primary challenges to Republicans who vote for the bill and Trump suggesting he would explore deporting Musk. 3. The Education Department announced an agreement with the University of Pennsylvania that will require the school to bar transgender women from participating on its women's sports teams and vacate the records of Leah Thomas, a former student and transgender woman

who competed on the women's swim team. Separately, the Education Department declined to release about $7 billion in federal funding, which Congress allocated to support after-school and summer programs, English language programs, teacher training, and other services. 4. A federal judge blocked the Trump administration from proceeding with plans to reorganize several Department of Health and Human Services agencies and lay off approximately 10,000 employees. 5.

Paramount agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit brought by President Trump over its editing of former Vice President Kamala Harris' interview with CBS's 60 Minutes in October. The funds will go toward Trump's future presidential library and his legal fees in the case. President Trump's massive domestic policy bill overcame a major hurdle today. Vice President J.D. Vance broke a tie in the U.S. Senate today to pass the legislation after lawmakers worked through the night and made last-minute changes. The bill shrinks Medicaid and extends trillions in tax cuts, and it's the most expensive budget bill Congress has ever considered.

But its future is still uncertain, as House Republicans raise new concerns. On Tuesday, following a marathon all-night voting session, the Republicans' taxation and spending bill passed the Senate 51 to 50 on a tie-breaking vote from Vice President J.D. Vance. Republican Senators Rand Paul, Tom Tillis, and Susan Collins joined every Democratic Senator in voting no.

All other Republican Sen senators voted yes. The bill, known as the One Big Beautiful Bill, or OBBB, originally passed the House 215-214 on May 22nd, but due to changes in the Senate, it now requires another majority vote in the lower chamber before it can be sent to President Donald Trump for approval. Since it passed the House, several key aspects of the bill have changed. The Senate voted to raise the initial debt limit increase from an additional $4 trillion to $5 trillion, raise the state and local tax deduction cap to $40,000 for five years

instead of permanently, increase appropriations to hire immigration judges, and cut an additional $300 billion in federal health care spending through tightening eligibility and reporting requirements. It also amended or removed portions of the House's asylum, private school voucher, and green energy provisions. Additional measures such as barring non-citizens from receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits, or SNAP, reducing the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau's funding to zero and forcing the federal government to sell public lands were previously removed for violating the Byrd Rule. We covered the OB-BB's drafting in the House and its amendment in the Senate under the Byrd Rule, and you can check those out with links in today's episode description.

However, many features of the bill remain unchanged. The Senate's version also increases spending on military and immigration enforcement, expands oil and gas drilling and nuclear energy incentives, and makes most of the tax cuts from the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act permanent. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the Senate's bill, if passed, will add over $4 trillion to the national debt over the next 10 years. Senator Polisady voted against the bill for increasing the debt limit and spending, while Senators Tillis and Collins disapproved of the decreased funding for Medicaid.

Meanwhile, Senator Lisa Murkowski, the Republican from Alaska, initially signaled disapproval of the bill's cuts to Medicaid and its rollback of Biden-era clean energy credits, but ultimately voted yes after securing exceptions for Alaskans. Speaker Mike Johnson has called the House back from recess to begin voting on the bill, which is expected to begin on Wednesday, and President Donald Trump has set a July 4th deadline to sign it into law.

Republicans maintain a 220 to 212 majority in the House, meaning that Speaker Johnson can only afford to lose five Republican votes to approve the package, assuming all Democrats vote against it. However, some moderate and hardline conservatives among House Republicans have indicated that they intend to vote against the bill. Representatives David Valadeo and Young Kim from California have expressed discontent about the Medicaid cuts, while Representative Chip Roy from Texas said he doesn't think the math is correct yet, and Representative

Andy Ogles from Tennessee called the Senate version of the bill a dud. House Democrats, meanwhile, universally oppose the bill. Today, we'll cover what the left and the right are saying about the OBB passing in the Senate, and then Isaac's tape. We'll be right back after this quick break. Alright, first up let's start with what the left is saying. The left expects the bill to pass, but worries about its far-reaching fiscal consequences. Some say the bill is poised to uniquely benefit the wealthy. Others say the means by which the bill was passed undercuts faith in democracy.

In the New York Times, Andrew Durin said the bill puts the nation on a new, more perilous fiscal path. Washington has not exactly won a reputation for fiscal discipline over the last few decades, as both Republicans and Democrats passed bills that have, bit by bit, degraded the nation's finances. But the legislation that Republicans passed through the Senate on Tuesday stands apart in its harm to the budget, Durin wrote. Not only did the initial analysis show it adding at least $3.3 trillion to the nation's

debt over the next 10 years, making it among the most expensive bills in a generation, but it would also reduce the amount of tax revenue the country collects for decades. Reconciliation, the special legislative procedure that Republicans used to avoid the filibuster in the Senate and pass the bill along party lines, has long included the requirement that bills cannot add to the debt for more than a decade. But Republicans decided to disregard that rule,

relying on an accounting gimmick to argue that the $3.8 trillion cost of extending the 2017 tax cuts is actually zero and therefore they can continue indefinitely, Durin said. Not only has that argument opened the door to an even larger increase in the debt over time, but it is also an indication that lawmakers in Washington are becoming even less serious about containing the debt. In the Atlantic, Amy Lowry called it a big, bad, very ugly bill. If enacted, the OB-BBA would be among the most consequential pieces of legislation in

recent memory. It would cost more than Trump's COVID Rescue Bill, Joe Biden's COVID Rescue Bill, Trump's first term tax cut, George W. Bush's tax cut, or Barack Obama's stimulus package. It would dwarf the Affordable Care Act in its budget impact. Still, two in three Americans say they have heard little or nothing about it, Lowry wrote. The legislation is first and foremost a tax cut. By one estimate, households in the top 0.1% of the income distribution would get a $296,160 annual tax break. Families in the top 1% would retain $78,650 a year.

The average family in the bottom fifth of the income distribution would get a tax cut of $160. On the campaign trail, Trump promised to get rid of taxes on Social Security benefits. The bill does not do that. Trump also promised no tax on tips. The bill creates a profession-specific fine-print loophole for tipped income. But many hairdressers and barbacks do not earn enough to pay federal income taxes anyway, and tax professionals figure that rich people will exploit the provision by making their

earnings look like tips, Lowry said. To pay for these tax cuts for rich people, the bill destabilizes the American medical system, guts anti-hunger programs, hikes utility costs, and makes education more expensive. In the Washington Post, Perry Bacon Jr. wrote, the big beautiful bill is being enacted in an ugly way. The bill was put together so quickly and secretly that even members themselves don't understand how certain provisions made it into the legislation. It's very unpopular with the public.

And yet, despite all that, the Senate passed the bill, putting it on the path to being signed into law by President Donald Trump later this week, Bacon said. Another illustration of our broken democracies that policies enacted by government leaders often aren't anywhere close to the American public's views and preferences, while policies that voters really want remain stalled. Part of the problem is today's Republican Party, and not just Trump. GOP politicians at the state and national levels campaign largely on social issues such as immigration, but once in office, enact tax

cuts for the wealthy and limits on the regulations of businesses," Bacon wrote. This instance on passing policies that we know the public opposes shows that Republicans are wary of interest groups, journalists, and others closely examining their proposals. So Trump's domestic bill is being passed in the same way that legislation goes through in Republican-controlled states across the country. Bills are written in secret and voted on as quickly as possible after their release. Alright, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. The right mostly supports the bill's passage, arguing it advances key priorities despite

some downsides. Some say the bill will boost small businesses across industries. Others say the legislation advances the GOP's populist realignment under Trump. The Wall Street Journal editorial board said the bill had to pass. Republicans say it is the start of a new economic golden age, while Democrats call it spendthrift and cruel. They're both wrong. The bill had to pass to avoid a $4.5 trillion tax hike next year when the 2017 reforms expire,

but as a reform of the post-COVID welfare state, it is a disappointment," the board wrote. The bill's best news is the economic certainty it will provide businesses. It makes permanent the 2017 reform's lower marginal tax rates, 20% deduction for pass-through businesses, increased estate tax exemption, and immediate expensing for capital investment

and research and development. Don't believe Democratic assertions that the bill guts the safety net. Savings from food stamps and Medicaid come entirely from policy tweaks that reduce waste and abuse, such as stricter eligibility checks. The bill attempts to crack down on state scams that expand food stamp eligibility and use provider taxes to launder more federal Medicaid matching funds, the board said. The bill is more than anything the triumph of GOP political necessity, and the end of

the tax uncertainty is its main virtue. In The Washington Examiner, Kip Ettenberg and Alex Hendry called the bill a win for America's small businesses. Small businesses across the country, including the wholesaler, distributors, and equipment manufacturers that we represent, have been hit by high prices and economic uncertainty and are in desperate need of policies that will help them grow. The big beautiful bill achieves exactly that,

Etta Bergen-Hendry wrote. For instance, the legislation that makes 199A small business deduction permanent and expands it to 20%. This will provide relief and certainty to over 25 million businesses, according to IRS data. Since it was first enacted in 2017, the deduction helped support 2.6 million jobs, 161 billion in annual employee compensation, and 325 billion in GDP.

The legislation also includes key provisions that will help small businesses invest, such as the restoration of immediate expensing for research and development costs and a 100% bonus depreciation for investing in new equipment. Restoring R&D expensing, a policy that existed for 70 years until it expired in 2022, will help businesses innovate, adopt the next generation of technologies, and stay competitive, Ettaberg and Henry wrote. According to a report by the Council of Economic Advisors, adopt the next generation of technologies and stay competitive," Ettaberg and Henry wrote. According to a report by the Council of Economic Advisers, over the next four years, the bill

will increase long-run GDP by as much as 4.9% and raise annual real wages by as much as $7,200 per worker or $10,900 for a family with two children. In the American conservative, W. James Antle III suggested the bill is the product of a GOP in transition. Trump is changing the Republican Electoral Coalition, but substantially parts of the party remain fundamentally unchanged from the consensus that more or less reigned from Ronald Reagan to George W. Bush. Trump could not have won without such voters either, and neither could virtually any GOP

lawmaker in either house of Congress Antle wrote The party has not fully adapted to a political moment in which it receives a majority of the vote from working-class whites and in last Year's presidential election at least Hispanic men while fairly rich white liberals in New York City vote for Zoran Mamdani If Republicans no longer view supply side as their main theory for promoting economic growth, it is not clear what the replacement will be, Antle said. Before Trump, Republicans were stuck in a rut of using libertarian sounding rhetoric to excuse themselves from solving problems at home,

though seldom overseas or occasionally in outer space, while at the same time allowing the government to grow perpetually bigger, more intrusive, and more deficit financed. The libertarian movement lasted roughly that long in retrospect. Whether the populist realignment can last, which brings us to my take. Elon Musk once said that a bill can be big or it can be beautiful, but I don't know if it can be both. And I'm starting to think he was right.

I'll be both. And I'm starting to think he was right. I'll be direct. I think this is a very poorly constructed piece of legislation that got slightly better in the last week, mostly through removals by senators or the parliamentarian, but the entire process has been a total mess. And even though this bill contains some genuinely good

and exciting provisions, which I will talk about, I don't see how the House is going to be able to take this as is. A lot of legislators in the House are very mad, which could mean changes that trigger another Senate vote, which could mean more changes there, which could mean another House vote, etc. Around we go. I'm unsure what's going to happen here. Almost by design, this bill contains so much that even describing it all is difficult.

Trump has tried to ram through the lion's share of his agenda in a single reconciliation bill. And the result, after all the horse trading, favor giving, and voting for things you didn't read, is a Frankensteinian monster of sometimes incoherent proposals, many of which seem motivated by culture wars and talking points rather than sound economic policy. Let's start with energy. Trump seems genuinely fixated on killing wind and solar and quote unquote doing coal, a view on energy that is so retrograde it's hard to express how silly it is.

Renewable labels and climate change aside, wind, solar, and geothermal energy are just cheaper. Red lettering them will make electricity and energy more expensive and kill a burgeoning industry and its jobs. Until yesterday, this bill included an excise tax that can only be described as an attack on solar and wind energy. The provision didn't just eliminate subsidies for solar and wind, it added a new excise tax on projects with components sourced from prohibited foreign entities like China, which effectively kills all future solar and wind projects

through resulting price increases. At the same time, the bill would also tax nuclear and geothermal energy and battery storage while subsidizing the coal industry. Just a reminder, coal kills millions of people every year and more coal miners die from cancer annually than have died from nuclear radiation exposure ever. Derek Thompson, co-author of the book, Abundance, put it plainly, quote, American energy policy cannot afford to be this dumb.

End quote. Thompson continued to hit the bullseye writing that, you'll sometimes hear conservatives accuse progressives of caring so much about climate change that they'd force ordinary Americans to bear the costs of higher prices and worse lives just to save the planet. But right now it's Republicans who are willing to stymie energy production at the risk

of rising electricity costs just to own progressives and punish their favorite energy sources." That's all true. Any administration actually pursuing energy independence for America would never do this. The good news is that the excise tax was stripped from this bill. The bad news is that the bill still removes subsidies for wind and solar that created jobs and cheap energy in red states while subsidizing the cost of industry. Unsurprisingly, some coal plant owning senators seem non-plus by the potential job losses. It's so bad that even

former allies of the White House like Elon Musk are going to war with the bill, threatening to primary anyone who votes for it. Changes to healthcare are frustratingly similar. While healthcare is one of the largest sectors of government spending, Congress's proposed solution isn't to find savings through intelligent reform or by figuring out how much waste there really is. It's to cut eligibility for Medicaid,

which provides health insurance to 71 million, mostly low-income Americans. This would be the largest cut to Medicaid in history, and if past would represent the biggest promise Trump has broken so far in his presidency. Trump said in May, quote, we are doing absolutely nothing to hurt Medicare, Medicaid or social security, nothing at all, end quote.

The cuts are so big that Republicans simultaneously included a $50 billion rural health care fund to try to mitigate the impact on their own constituents' hospitals. Perhaps the best representation of how Republicans are handling this comes from Senator Lisa Murkowski, the Republican from Alaska, who voted for the bill's national cuts while trying desperately to exempt her state from them. Just to say this plainly, any time you need to create a new funding mechanism to fill the gaps of the thing you are cutting, or swing vote senators are scrambling to prevent the law you're

passing from applying to their state, what you're doing might be bad. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that 12 million lower income Americans will lose health insurance by 2034. Republican Senator Tom Tillis from North Carolina, who voted against the bill after announcing he wasn't running for reelection, has warned that Trump is breaking a promise not to cut Medicaid that voters will feel by being kicked off Medicaid in two to three years. Conveniently, that's after the 2026 midterms. This is a nothing of the cuts in funding to Planned Parenthood, which provides a huge range of non-abortion-related services, like cancer screenings to women and men

who can't afford health care. For what it's worth, I don't oppose everything about these Medicaid cuts. In fact, some elements of these reforms are totally sensible to me. Qualification caps for those with homes worth more than $1 million, new verifications to avoid sending money to dead

people or small copayments for people well above the poverty line could all work out well. I'm not even ideologically opposed to work requirements. The idea makes sense to me. I just haven't seen any evidence that they actually work by increasing employment or improving health outcomes, and it has already backfired into the states that have tried it. Ultimately, as much as I'd really love to talk about Medicaid reform on its own, I recognize

what this bill is practically doing. Kicking low-income people off their health insurance to save money that gets spent on tax cuts, immigration enforcement, and the military. In that sense, it is not far off from what the strongest Democratic critics say it is. The Trump administration has not even begun to mount a coherent response. Trump keeps insisting Medicaid isn't being touched, while Vice President J.D. Vance has dismissed the cuts as minutiae and insisted that the only thing that matters in this gigantic impactful bill is how it will limit illegal immigration.

This is bizarre and unconvincing as a defense since according to both the administration and official government numbers, illegal immigration is already at all time lows, crowning achievement early on in Trump's second term. The bottom line? This bill is going to add trillions to the deficit and debt, substantially worsen our fiscal situation and offer no path forward for our fiscal future that leads away from the brink. And yes, despite some people's insistence, the CBO is actually pretty good at predicting these things. As Musk said on X yesterday, what good is Doge saving $160 billion when this bill increases the debt ceiling by $5 trillion? Putting aside the dubiousness of Musk's $160 billion claim,

that sounds a lot like a point someone else I know has been making, that someone else is me. If you step back for a moment, it is actually remarkable to consider how something this flawed made it to the finish line at all. Senator Josh Hawley, the Republican from Missouri, who in May made a compelling argument in the New York Times against cutting Medicaid,

condemned the cuts and then voted for the bill anyway. Murkowski's commitment to her own constituents is commendable, did one of the most remarkable things I've ever seen a Senator do. She cast the tie-breaking vote for the bill, then immediately dragged the bill in the press and said she hoped the House would send it back to the Senate.

Longtime deficit hawks are now proudly voting to increase the deficit. Senator Lindsey Graham, the Republican from South Carolina, the budget chair, confessed that he didn't even know how the solar and wind excise tax got into the bill. And don't forget, now that the bill is back in the House, its odds of passage with a razor-thin Republican majority are substantially higher because three Democrats have died in office since January and their presence would have been enough to sink the bill in May. Of course, the bill is not all bad.

In fact, it is replete with wise provisions, like I said at the top. Extending the 2017 tax cuts will provide economic certainty to businesses and could spur some economic growth. A version of Trump's no tax on tips policy will allow service workers to deduct up to $25,000 in tips and $12,500 in overtime pay from their taxable income, at least until 2028. And we don't yet know for which professions. The bill increases the child tax credit from $2,000 to $2,200.

It introduces new deductions for social security taxes and encouragingly and finally caps graduate student loans, which should make it harder for colleges to keep raising tuition while seeking more loan subsidies. Perhaps most excitingly though, the bill does something I've been begging for for literally years. It nearly triples the appropriations for immigration

court staff and will enable the hiring of some 800 judges. That might be enough to clear the entire backlog of asylum cases. Republicans will be thrilled about this change because under the Trump administration, it will limit immigration, while Democrats can look forward to the day they regain power and can enforce the current asylum law to their own preferences. Still, we need more judges to have more order, and we need order to have a functioning immigration system, and I've been screaming this from the rooftops for so long my voice is nearly gone, but now it could finally happen. Unfortunately, the bill also pours billions of dollars into the Immigration and enforcement ICE, and into customs and border protection, the CBP, and border security at a time when we drastically

need savings, and again, when illegal immigration has hit record lows. This one-two punch on border enforcement is representative of the bill largely. Sprinkles of good news overshadowed by glaring failures of imagination and poorly thought out policy. In a fantasy land, Republicans in the House would reject this or send it back to the Senate or extract some of the stronger provisions and try not to do 9 million things all at

once via reconciliation. In this reality though, I think a likely outcome is enough members get brow-beat beaten into accepting something they know is bad, and then fall in line for fear of facing the president's wrath. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, that is it for my take, which brings us to your questions answered. This is part three of our three part answer to a question from an anonymous reader in Syracuse, New York, who said, we hear so much about the humanitarian situation going on

in Gaza, but so little about other global conflicts. I know that there's a dire situation in Sudan, but I don't know how bad it is or what is causing it. Can you explain what's going on in Sudan? So we answered part one and two of this question in the last two podcasts. Today is part three. So this part is about where we are now.

Today's Sudanese Civil War is not clearly delineated as the two North-South Arab African Muslim Christian Sudanese Civil Wars that preceded it. It's not even truly a battle between Muslim Christian Sudanese civil wars that preceded it. It's not even truly a battle between the government Sudanese armed forces and the rapid support forces that's the SAF and RSF militias. Instead, it's turning into a proxy war between greater powers. Since war broke out in 2023, both armies have struggled over control of Sudan's capital

Khartoum. While the SAF has more infrastructure at its disposal and a more legitimate claim to governance as the nation's army, the RSF has control over smuggling routes in the south and west and has been more aggressive. To be able to strike targets far from the front, the RSF has been using Chinese drones imported through the United Arab Emirates, the UAE, which, since the UAE has control over ports in Somalia and Yemen, can tighten its control over the Red Sea shipping channel by adding another keyboard in Sudan. To prevent the UAE, Turkey and Iran

have been supporting the SAF with long range weaponry. The conflict has turned into a full on proxy war with Russia's Wagner Group, now Afrika Korps, and Libya backing the RSF, and Israel and Ukraine supporting the SAF. Although the conflict is officially a civil war, foreign weaponry and personnel have been targeting weapons depots, airstrips, and drone factories. The strikes have been mostly logistical, resulting in relatively few casualties—150,000, for a years-long civil war. However, the war has massively disrupted the country. Regular bombings and sectarian violence have displaced

roughly 8 million people who are suffering from malnutrition and disease, and several international organizations are calling the Sudanese displacement the largest ongoing humanitarian disaster in the world. Now, the war may be about to enter a new phase. On May 3rd, the SAF struck a cargo plane. It said it believed to be carrying suicide drones, but instead was carrying soldiers and mercenaries,

including Emiratis. The UAE responded by attacking Port Sudan, which had previously been untouched in the war. The SAF then accepted a UN-backed, week-long ceasefire on Friday, but it's still unknown how long RSF plans to respond. All right. That is the conclusion of our three-part series on Sudan. Let us know if you found this series helpful. You want other multi-part answers to complex questions, you can just reply to our newsletter and let us know, or write in to staff, s-t-a-f-f at readtangle.com.

All right, I'm going to send it back to John for the rest of the podcast. I'll be back tomorrow with a little bit of a special Thursday edition as we head into the 4th of July break. So I'll see you guys then. And of course, don't forget 8pm tonight, me and Camille Foster, YouTube, Instagram,

probably some other platforms, keep an ear out for that. Have a good one, peace. Thanks, Isaac. Here's your under the radar story for today, folks. In June, factory activity in the United States contracted for a fourth consecutive month, raising concerns about the impacts of tariffs

on manufacturing and a broader economic slowdown. In particular, the employment index for factory workers fell to a three-month low, and an index of order backlogs fell 2.8 points, the most in a year. The slowdown coincides with government data released last week showing that consumer spending in May declined by the largest amount so far this year. Business has notably slowed in the last four to six weeks. Customers do not want to make commitments in the wake of massive tariff uncertainty," Fabricated Metals, a U.S.-based manufacturer, said.

Bloomberg has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. Alright, next up is our numbers section. There are approximately 887 pages in the Big Beautiful bill. The percentage of U.S. adults who support the Big Beautiful bill changing tax, spending, and Medicaid policies is 23%, according to a June 2025 Washington Post Ipsos poll. In that same poll, the percentage of U. of US adults who oppose the Big Beautiful bill changing tax spending and Medicaid policies is 42%. 34% of US adults say they have no opinion on the bill.

The net support for increasing child tax credits from $2,000 to $2,500 in the bill is plus 59%. The net support for ending tax breaks for solar, wind, and geothermal energy is minus 20 percent. The estimated cost to the federal budget over the next 10 years of permanently increasing the child tax credit to $2,200 in the bill is $817 billion, according to a Congressional Budget Office analysis. The estimated cost to the federal budget over the next 10 years of allowing workers

to deduct tips from taxable income for tax years 2025 to 2028 is $32 billion. And the estimated savings for the federal budget over the next 10 years of rolling back tax credits for wind, solar, nuclear, and geothermal power is $29 billion. And last but not least, our Have a Nice Day story. 67 year old Steve Mills is a book collector

in Hockley, England, who recently discovered something amazing about some of his books. Mills was rearranging a collection of children's books by Enid Blyton when he noticed a familiar name a child had written in the book. I opened the front cover and I was shocked to see my brother-in-law's name in it, Mills said. After asking his wife, he confirmed that the books had belonged to her as a child, nearly 50 years ago, when she lived about 170 miles away in Staffordshire. She was equally

shocked, Mills added. It was actually quite a cute thing to look at. The BBC has this story and there's a link in today's episode description. Alrighty, everybody, that is it for today's episode. As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to reedtangle.com where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership, or a bundle membership that gets you a discount on both. At 8 p.m. tonight on YouTube, we are going to be going live with a discussion between Isaac and Camille Foster, our new editor at large to discuss his piece on racial reckoning. We'd love to have you join us. Again, that's

8 p.m. Eastern tonight on YouTube. There is a link in the newsletter for you to go to and you can click subscribe and the little bell to receive notifications about tonight's live stream and upcoming YouTube videos and live streams. Isaac will be here with a special piece for the podcast and newsletter tomorrow and we will be off for the rest of the weekend. I hope you all get some restful and enjoyable time off and enjoy some of the fireworks and cookouts and festivities that 4th of July brings. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off.

Have an absolutely wonderful weekend, y'all. Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me, Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Law. Today's episode was edited and engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will K. Back and associate editors Hunter Tasperson, Audrey Moorhead, Bailey Saul, Lucy Knuth and Kendall White. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership, please visit our website at retangle.com.